History of Music Videos

Music videos became into prominence around the 1980s when the well known channel MTV began, there were 'music videos' before this time, however, they were called 'promotional videos' or 'song videos'. For example, one of the most well known music videos prior to the 1980s, was Bob Dylan's 1965 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' video which was originally created for the documentary called 'Don't Look Back' -which followed Bob Dylan on his 1965 tour of England. One of the reasons this is one of the most memorable music videos, is because of its simplicity. It focuses on the actual lyrics of the song, rather than the image of the performer. Throughout the video it is just on straight shot of Bob Dylan himself holding up certain words from the lyrics in a back alley behind where he was performing one of his shows. This shows how important these lyrics, and the message they are trying to give, are to Bob Dylan.
Below are some stills from the video...

 The mise-en-scene and cinematography do not change at all throughout this video it is just one shot of him, framed in a long shot with him only taking up 1/3 of the screen, with the lyrics he is holding taking up into the 2nd third. He doesn't mime or even perform in any way. He is just simply holding the lyrics for his audience to see, again reinforcing the idea that the lyrics are the most important part of this song for him; not how he looks, where it's set or how fancy the editing looks.

Another band that take a similar approach to Bob Dylan in their music video for 'Hard Day's Night' is The Beatles. In 1964 The Beatles released the movie 'Hard Day's Night' (along with the album, it was the first multi-media release) and what people loved about it was how real it was. It was essentially a day in the life of The Beatles, they played themselves (unlike artists such as Cliff Richard that promoted their own songs in movies where they play a character that isnt themselves). It had very strong verisimilitude as the diegesis was their everyday life, they were not trying to set up a fake world with a narrative for their songs, they simply played themselves as the stars they were playing their own hits. The opening scene is them running away from a bunch of screaming fans (which was all real) and running about a train station, again creating realism within the mise-en-scene.

In the section of the film where they sing 'Can't Buy Me Love' again they do not perform the song in anyway, for the majority of the song they are just running through a field (below) which again makes people listen to the lyrics of the song, and make the actual message of the music more important than the image of the performer or making it look as fancy as they can, there is nothing 'Hollywood' or glamorous about running through a field, they are focusing on the music and them doing what they want in the video could represent the fun and the passion they had for the music they were making, not just focusing on the fame and fortune that there music has presented them with.

Now there is so much more diversity as to what  artists can do with their music videos. Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' took a new approach to music videos, not only did it break technical conventions (such as having 3 different diegesis within one video), but also the fact that it cost approximately $500,000 to make and lasted almost 15 minutes.


Since then, convergence has become a major part of music videos, for example, allowing artists to have the diversity to make a music video more like a short film or a documentary style (similar to Jay-Z's 'Picasso Baby' video, which he filmed in an art gallery, including many different members of the public, from waitresses, to sculptors to actors).
Sites such as YouTube and TV shows such as MTV have also made marketing a very important part in the production and success of the song.